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Monday, March 17, 2014

Not Quite the Right Spot

[Warning: There are curse words in yon post]

Somewhat loosely related to post about the Eve community is peoples use of words. Amy commented about being tired of the language that people use. Language, what we use to communicate can also be one of the biggest banes of existence where there is communication. I am not shy about admitting that I minimize local to ignore smack talk.

One thing CCP added in the Rubicon 1.3 patch is a word filter. I somehow missed it when I read the dev blog about it. I think that I was enthralled by some of the other things added in. However now you can replace your most hated words with something beautiful. For example 'mayonnaise' can become 'the condiment of evil'. This is how the world becomes a better place.

But, Amy did bring up the language used and I happened to have a chat log between someone and my CEO that I found both amusing and interesting. I found the below conversation fascinating. Like most corporations, 7-2 has people in various positions to handle various duties. It stops one person from having all of the work. Our corporation description lists me as the diplomat. That means I filter a lot of stuff to other people. The public chatroom has our recruitment people listed. I am fascinated by how many people skip all of these steps and head straight to our CEO for things. The complete conversation is here. I'm condensing it, below, to save space.

HA> o/
Dirty Protagonist > can i help you?
HA> so, If I call you a filthy fucking whore what will you do?
Dirty Protagonist > nothing?
HA> Close convo or laugh :)? Oh well
Dirty Protagonist > do you want something?
HA> I do actually. I'm honestly coasting around looking for corps
Dirty Protagonist > you can't be serious
HA> Im in the scope. LOL. just dropped... hmm 3 minutes ago
Dirty Protagonist > what makes you think i want you in my corp?
HA> the question isnt that. I was merely looking for other pilots that enjoy the same game tactic as I do. (links a killmail). that right there
Dirty Protagonist > oh. you like that?
HA> fuck yeah dude. I was so happy to see other people fly ishtarsa like yall did lol
Dirty Protagonist > cool. let me dish it to you straight. i'm not hiring
HA> Sweet. Sorry for coming to you outta the blue
Dirty Protagonist > certainly not cold calling, <1 year scrubs that call me a "filthy fucking whore" before they tell me waht they want
HA> you see that was a test on my part. but if you feel that way. then why not
Dirty Protagonist > oh yeah?
HA> Yeah it was..

How we speak to each other is a large part of how we view each other and everyone has a different idea of what is right. For some cursing is not acceptable. For others, it is slurs. There are still others who glory in both cursing and slurs. Inside of that we tend to have different forms of communication depending on who we are speaking to. I tend to use a shorter hand in casual conversation and a more serious tone, similar to my blog when I am in a discussion. I've said before that one reason I blog is so that I do not spam chat channels with my endless, pondering thoughts.

People tend to gravitate towards groups of similar habit, thought, and behavior. It is one reason we have a polite mode of conversation. It is somewhat universal and even if someone sneers at it it tends not to offend. It allows two groups who may have incomparable communication habits to communicate. If HA was actually interested in our corporation he'd have taken a few more moments to think about his approach. However, I'm sure confidence works a lot of the time and one can say that his form of communication was very effective at discovering what he sought to discover. Mayhaps it is a matter of perception. He may have assumed those who lived in low sec, ran around with outlaw sec status would respond positively to his initial inquiry. Those are all guesses with no fact to back them up.

In the end HA was directed by our recruiters to read the application on our forum and apply in that direction if he so chose. He didn't. I do not find myself surprised.

17 comments:

Must be nice, thinking that with a certain choice of words you will be able to get somewhere or make friends.. I guess there are those who are likeminded but still. What would his thinking process have been like?"If I call that person a filthy dirty whore, and he won't mind, we'll be best of friends!"

I find it quite annoying. Not so much the usage of such words since they don't really affect me, but more the infectious effect they can have. As pitiful as it might sound, if people around you keep saying certain words it is difficult not fall into using the terms yourself.

Sometimes I slip up and use terms I'd rather not, and it annoys me to no end. I don't want to use those terms, but with their pervasiveness in current eve culture I find that it actually takes conscious effort to avoid using them at times.

Quite frankly, the language that is permitted in this game is abhorrent compared to any other mmo I've ever played. Sure people may use racial slurs in private, but I've never seen so much in local chat or on the game forums.

If CCP wanted to do something to encourage new players getting rid of the racist language at least in public would be a great step in the right direction. It's quite off-putting for new players and since the company does nothing about it, it's implicitly implied that its ok.

I hope you're not advocating putting some kind of word filter in. Say I mistype 'Wag' as 'Vag'. In a game with a stupid word filter this text would not be allowed. (I've played such a game). And word filters don't work because people will be able to say the same stuff just by misspelling the 'dirty' words.

CCP is doing the right thing: Trusting people to behave as adults. (And if they go over the line they can get banned).

It's off the wall and unlikely any game company would ever implement it... But... Wouldn't it be fun if using abusive language in a public channel automatically got you flagged criminal so anyone could attack him?

Almost like real life... yap off enough and eventually someone is going to hit you.

Language defines a society its culture and as recruitment officer, you are responsible to maintain it. Its that simple. I was dedicated recruitment officer for my alliance for a long time and on several occasions rejected people for their use of words. I can deal with lacking piloting skills, I can not deal with racial, sexual or other slurs.

I had a TS interview with someone, asking him why he wanted to fly in our WH. His answer, "just interested in some jewing". That was the end of that conversation....

I did notice the local chat filtering in 1.3 and I'm very happy about it. There is one word in particular that hits me like a steel toe boot to the gut everytime I see it and I'm more than happy to replace it with ***. I would love to be able to replace it with another word... that would totally make my day!

Realistically there is only one word that I universally filter if given the chance as that particular word invokes a quite unpleasant visceral reaction. I *know* it's there even behind the asterisks, so I think I would prefer to change it to another word... perhaps "hug." I like that much better. I could handle someone hug-caging my POS. :)

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